8:4
Prairie stirred in her chair. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
“I feel fine.” She poked a finger at the iv. “Take this out and we can go.”
“I think you should stay in bed.”
“I think you should try to make me.”
Rather being even slightly quailed, Prairie leaned forward and got right in Kim’s face. “I could.”
“I’m scared. Are you going to slash my throat?”
Kim knew she’d stepped over the line the moment Prairie recoiled and her already pale skin lost most of its color.
“Yo!” Ivan snapped. “Uncalled for.”
So, maybe she was working a few things out. And doing a shit job of it. Despite knowing what was and wasn’t proper social behavior and totally getting that words hurt, shit just kept slipping out. It wasn’t like her friends killed her every day. Or she tried to kill them. Or she was kidnapped. And tortured. And forced back into a mind-set she thought she’d left behind when she left home.
Her heart started beating crazy fast. Her breath came in short hard tugs through her nostrils, too shallow to actually inflate her lungs. Just as her vision started going static Gwen squeezed her lower leg and poured some energy into her that went a long way to dropping her blood pressure and settling the scurry of thoughts in her head.
She gave Prairie a tentative smile. “I may not be one hundred percent okay with this.”
“It’s okay. I did slash your throat.”
“It’s not really that.” Kim slanted a glance to Siobhan, meeting her friends eyes so their ghosts could dance. “Not really.”
Siobhan rolled her lips over her teeth and nodded before picking up the papers from her lap, straightening them, and shoving them into her bag. Once that was settled she looked to Prairie. “I know she’s your patient but I dosed her pretty well. If she can get out of the bed on her own, get dressed, and make it out of the cottage will you consider her good enough?”
Prairie gave this consideration, then nodded. “She has to get out of bed on her own, get dressed, eat something, and then get out of the cottage.”
“Right!” Kim curled her legs up and rolled to a seat on the bed, letting the sheets fall away. She stopped and frowned at the iv, then held that hand out to Prairie. “Can you remove this.”
Prairie made a moue but complied, removing the iv efficiently and stowing it in a container on the bed table before sitting back in her chair and pinning Kim with a steady gaze. “Go on.”
Under that gimlet glare Kim kinda felt she didn’t have many options. Collapse back in the pillows, which sort of maybe looked like a comfortable option, or get her ass out of the bed, dressed, fed, and to the door. Just thinking about all the steps involved made the pillows look that much more appealing. But, she had a stubborn streak a mile and a half wide and fuck if this was going to be one more failure on her books.
Making sure she was adequately covered by the long white cotton nightgown someone had put her in – and she wasn’t going to ask, nope – she pushed her butt off the bed, straightened her legs, and forced herself to stand. She considered it a victory when she only wobbled a little.
She’d been in bed a week. No amount of potions was going to completely fix that, though she did feel energized and far less achy since Siobhan had dosed her. She was at a solid sixty, maybe even sixty-five percent. That was enough to get her moving to her wardrobe to yank out a pair of black cargoes and a t-shirt with a squirrel on it that read “some people say I have ADD but that’s not… Look a squirrel!” The dresser along the wall coughed up underwear and a job bra.
Patti stepped out of the way to give her a direct line towards the door. As she amble, barrel, kinda waddled in that direction Dempsey stepped back into the living area, clearing the door so she could shuffle walk through it and to the bathroom situated near the kitchen quadrant of the rectangular space.
She closed the door decisively behind her. The door click was a starting pistol, sending everyone else into motion. Prairie picked up the medical paraphernalia scattered around the bedroom, storing it in a tote and shoving it under the bed for recovery later. Gwen wandered into the kitchen and washed a few dishes that were stacked in the sink. Siobhan dumped her bag out on the bed, effectively covering the surface with jars and pots and packets tied with ribbons, then began to methodically inventory the mess. The order of it helped keep her thoughts in straight lines, something she needed badly to do.
“I need to get a few things from my place. Back in a few,” Ivan announced as he headed towards the door muttering something about being prepared at least once. Since his house was eight down from Kim’s it wasn’t going to take that long to get there and back.
Patti wandered over to where Gwen was washing, picked up a towel, and took the plates and cups from Gwen to dry them before putting them in the rack next to the sink. Sass kept up a quiet commentary of peeps and squeaks from Patti’s cleavage, waving its arms as it directed her in her task.
By their actions they all made it clear they didn’t expect Kim to be out of the bathroom any time quick, but they were okay with the wait.
Dan sidled over to Abe and picked up the conversation they’d left off when they got the message from Ben. Dempsey walked back into the bedroom to where Ben was propped against the wall at the foot of the bed, idly watching Siobhan do her inventory.
“It’s amazing how much stuff she fits in that bag,” he muttered as Dempsey took up a position next to him, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.
“Prairie gave me that sword she picked up when Siobhan was taken. I still haven’t gotten that slipper from you.”
“You haven’t?” Ben lifted his brows. “Hmmm.”
“Siobhan gave me the ax.”
Siobhan looked up at her name in time to catch the accusatory look Ben shot at her.
“Why did you give him the ax?”
“It’s just an ax as far as we know. I was just keeping it in my vault. It wasn’t doing us any good there and Dempsey convinced me he had resources that would help in identifying it.”
Ben turned to look at Dempsey. “So, did you? Identify it?”
Dempsey held his gaze steady. “No.”
“Nothing?”
“It’s an ax.”
“That’s it?”
“There was a residual of Magick at the core of it. Not enough to assess but enough to say that the item once held Magick.”
“Helpful. Not. What about the sword?”
“That is a much more interesting item.”
“Do tell. No really, tell.”
Dempsey frowned. “I’m sensing some animosity.”
Ben crossed his arms and his jaw set on a mulish angle. “I’m sensing some not sharing.”
Dempsey tilted his head and fingered his eyebrow. “Not much to share. Except that there isn’t much to share, which is-” He paused, considered, shrugged, “Unusual.”
Siobhan was now fully listening to the conversation, though her hands continued to move over the packets, assessing by touch. “How so?”
“The sword is Magick. But I can’t find any history on it.” He didn’t elaborate if he meant by research or by other means. Siobhan was struck by a moment’s frustration over the unspoken rule you didn’t ask about someone’s Magick. They either offered or they didn’t. She waited to see if Dempsey would offer.
“Do you have some expectation of finding the provenance of all Magick items?”
The corner of Dempsey’s mouth ticked up. “Yeah.”
That was it. Yeah. It was like pulling teeth. “All Magick items?”
“Yeah.”
Well, that line of questioning was going nowhere. Time to switch tracks. “So the significance of being unable to find anything on the sword is…?”
“It doesn’t exist.”
“Uh,” Ben drawled, “beg to differ. I saw it. It exists.”
“It doesn’t. Nor does the ax. If I had the shoe,” Dempsey gave Ben a hairy-eyeball, “I could tell if it’s the same.”
Siobhan blinked. Real slow. “Not to contradict you, because I’m sure you are an expert at what you do, but I have to agree with Ben. I held the ax. It exists.”
“It exists but it doesn’t exist.” Dempsey put no emphasis on either of the iterations of the word ‘exist’ to suggest either one had specific relevance to him.
Again Siobhan studied him. Again she blinked. Several times, waiting to see if he’d say anything more. But, no. So. “I don’t understand.”
Dempsey shrugged. “Me neither.”
It was all Siobhan could do not to throw her hands up in frustration. “If you had the shoe would it help?”
“Maybe.”
Siobhan looked at Ben with the non-nonsense ‘take a nap’ look that worked on the most stubborn of students. “Give him the shoe.”
Ben’s expression got distinctly more mulish. “I don’t have it on me.”
Siobhan was just about to tell him to get it when the bathroom door opened and Kim emerged, wrapping a towel turban around her hair. And just like that Siobhan kicked herself for not checking the bathroom first for scissors or anything else Kim could cut her hair off with.
“Did you cut your hair off?” she yelled into the next room.
Kim paused with her hands on the towel and then turned to look at Siobhan. “I didn’t. I thought about it but decided I’d give you the week. But if I get kidnapped again its on you.”
“That’s fair.”
“I’m going to make a sammy.” With that Kim moved towards the icebox, her steps measurably steadier than they’d been when she entered the bathroom. Maybe she was up to a venture after all. Go potions!
“Well, damn, no bread,” Kim announced after making a quick survey of the icebox. She snatched up a bottle of milk, grabbed a carton of eggs, then bumped the door closed with her hip. “Crepes it is.”
Ben frowned. “We don’t have time to make crepes,” he hollered from the bedroom.
Kim placed the eggs and milk on the kitchen island and stooped to grab a bowl from a low cupboard. “I was told eat or I go nowhere. So I’m making crepes.”
“Crepes?” Abe rose from the couch where they’d been sitting with Dan and stepped towards the island.
Kim gave a decisive nod. “Crepes. If you want some grab the flour. It’s in that metal container labeled coffee.”
Abe gave Kim a side eye as they reached their tattooed right hand out to pull the lid off the coffee container. “You keep your flour in the coffee tin. What do you keep in the flour tin?”
“Gummy worms. Doesn’t everyone?”
Abe must have had some questions about that as they popped the lid on the flour container and peered inside, then put the lid back with a slight grin.
Kim cracked an egg into the bowl, then stopped to look around at the group. “Anyone else want crepes?”
“I could eat a crepe,” Patti said.
Abe raised their hand. It hovered at cheek level, fingers bent. They looked at it, bit their lip, then brushed their hair behind their ear with it like that had been their intent all along.
“So that’s three for crepes.” Kim cracked another egg. “Anyone else?”
“Crepes good,” Gwen pronounced like it was the answer to an ancient mystery.
“Okay, then,” she pulled a whisk out of the island drawer and pointed it at Gwen, “Cut fruit.” That said she cracked a third egg into the bowl then measured in two and a quarter cups of milk. As she whisked the wet ingredients she looked over at Abe. “I’ll need four and a half cups of flour. Measure it? Also I’ll need sugar and salt. The sugar is in-”
“The tea tin?” Abe grinned as they lifted the lid of the tea container, revealing sugar.
“You appear to have cracked my system. The salt is on the back of the stove. Once you’ve measured all that pour it into here slowly,” she tapped the edge of the bowl then got back to whisking.
Siobhan watched the activity for a moment then went back to the bedroom to refill her bag. Dan wandered over to watch. “Anything I can do?”
“Grab the butter from the ice box and that big pan,” Kim indicated the pan rack hanging from the ceiling. “Heat the pan and melt a lot of butter in it.”
Dan nodded and moved to comply.
“Patti? Can you grab a dish to put the crepes on?”
Patti proved how many times she’d been in the house over the last week as she moved to the cupboard and pulled out a plate.
“Okay,” Kim said, never looking up from the whisking as Abe slowly poured the dry ingredients into the wet. “If you could put that next to the stove?”
“Got it,” Patti said, doing exactly that then stepping back to be out of the bustle of Abe and Kim mixing and Gwen chopping and Dan heating. It was kind of awesome how well they worked together, even Abe neatly falling into the rhythm of the cooking.
Kim finished whisking. “Really should let this sit a half a bell but time is limited. Still need to give it a few. How’s that pan going Dan?”
“Heating.”
“Cool.” Kim nodded then turned to press her hips against the island and braced her hands on the surface behind her as she looked at Abe. “So, new person, what’s your business with my friend, Dan?”
Abe to their credit didn’t seem taken aback by the abrupt question. Instead they lifted their right hand, the one that was almost black with tattoos, and twisted it to emphasize the ink. “Dempsey asked me to look at Dan’s new ink.”
“Hmm. Dan’s ink that he got while in the Magick house?”
“Yes.”
Kim eyed the black tattoo on Abe’s hand. “Yours similar?”
Abe nodded vigorously enough their hair flopped down to obscure one eye. They pushed it back behind their ear with the completely tattoo free left hand. “Close. I think.”
“Right hand black, left hand clean. What’s up with that?”
Kim was skirting dangerously close to overstepping and asking about Abe’s Magick. But it was a line she was pretty good at wobbling along. People often gave her more leeway once they understand her lack of social graces. And sometimes, maybe just a little, she used that, like she was doing now.
Abe’s face brightened. They smiled and as suspected their cheeks swelled to almost swallow the quick eyes determined to see everything at once. “I’m left handed.”
Like that answered anything. But, maybe to Abe it did. Huh.
“I think its a matter of dominance,” Abe gestured with both hands, swirling them in front of their chest. “Because my left hand is dominant the ink won’t settle. At least that’s what I think.”
Well, that said something and kind of nothing. To press or not to press? The dilemma was taken from Kim when Abe continued. “I’ve been trying to explain all this to Dan so its a little clearer in my head. How much do you know about the elements that make up the world.”
“Uhm, a lot?”
“Not earth, air, fire, water, and spirit. Well,” Abe paused, pursed their lips, looked at the ceiling, then back down to focus on Kim. “maybe spirit. But, what I mean, is what makes up those things.”
“Uhm, then I’m going to say nothing?” Kim picked up the bowl and started for the stove. “If you want to explain I’ll be over here. Walk with me?” She stopped abruptly and turned back in time for Abe to take one long legged stride and collide with her. The crepe batter sloshed in the bowl but didn’t tip over. Sweet. “Grab a spatula from the drawer and the measuring cup, huh?”
Abe planted their feet, jerking their head to look left and right quickly as they righted themselves. It wasn’t clear if this was a physical thing, resetting their balance from running into Kim, or if it was more a mental balance thing as they adjusted to Kim’s quick about face. Then, tentatively they said, “okay,” turned and grabbed the spatula from the drawer and cup from the sink and followed behind Kim like a duckling imprinting on a cuckoo.
Dan stepped aside as Kim approached, moving just far enough to watch as she made crepes and listen as Abe explained with no small detail their theory about the underpinning of the universe. There was a lot of words. And a lot of reference to capital W Words (Abe clarified that almost immediately). And some back peddling then redirecting as Abe went down odd avenues of thought.
If this was the succinct version Abe had come up with to explain things to Dan? Well, the broad version would probably have set some people to crying. But Kim nodded along as she made crepe after crepe, making a pile the size of a cake on the plate Patti had placed next to the stove. And Dan nodded, albeit with less movement as Kim started more animatedly moving while Abe poured forth their wisdom and injected those listening with their enthusiasm for the subject.
At some point during the explanation Gwen wandered over and grabbed half the crepes, then took them over to the island and began assembling. Seeing what Gwen was doing Patti offered her help. While they folded and rolled, they kept an ear to the conversation by the stove.
“So everything is made of Words?” Kim asked.
“Yes.” Abe’s answer had the unwavering conviction of youth or maybe of someone who spent way too long thinking on a specific topic. Like a doctorate candidate. Or an obsessive. Or an obsessive doctorate candidate, if that wasn’t a redundant statement.
“The elements are made of Words?”
“No.”
“But, you said everything.”
“Until I saw the concrete elements when we found you I thought so, but looking at them? No.” Abe shoved the flop of hair back from their forehead with an impatient hand. Once the hair was shoved back they thrashed the air with their fingers, a staccato beat that complimented the rush of their words. “I’ve been thinking about it since then and I think maybe the elements are primordial. Maybe they were the original creatures of this world.”
“Other stuff isn’t?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Maybe its just that they appeared as sentient beings?”
“No. People are sentient beings, but they’re also Words. Really dense Words but if I spend enough time studying someone I can see the things that make them up.”
“What defines them?” Dan asked. In his question was a dawning understanding of what they’d seen in Mal’s story when Kim and Ivan had been “edited out”.
Abe’s mop of hair took on a life of its own as they nodded their head vigorously, wriggling and writhing punctuation marks emphasizing their excitement. “Yes.”
“But the elements weren’t?” Kim deftly flipped a crepe onto the growing pile, then snatched the sliding towel turban off her head and tossed it onto one of the chairs pulled up to the living area side of the kitchen island.
Abe shrugged. “I mean, maybe I missed something but they didn’t feel,” they rubbed their fingers together like they were rolling clay, “ephemeral. They felt-”A pause. A shrug, “elemental.”
“Huh,” Kim poured the last of the batter into the hot pan, swirling the pan with a practiced wrist twist to spread it out into a neat circle. “It feels like your saying that the elements are native but we aren’t.”
“Yes.” Another vigorous nod, another floop of hair. “I think so.” Abe nibbled on the thumb nail of their unmarked left hand. “It’s a theory.”
“So,” Dan ventured, “everything else in the world was created.”
“Well, its kind of what religious people think, right? That there is a creator and they created everything?” Abe spoke with the confidence only the young could possess, before life beat your maybes into nos. And their confidence was so vast that it was hard not to get drawn into a place where maybe became a possibility you considered feasible. “The only way my theory differs is in what I think the creator uses to do it. And I have some inside knowledge that people without Magick don’t have because I can see the Words that make up everything. So can you.”
“Still working through that.”
Abe stretched to tap the word, or Word, Hope on Dan’s knuckles. “Its hard to argue with concrete proof.”
Kim flipped out the last crepe onto the pan and shifted her attention to Dan’s knuckles. “Concrete proof?”
“Abe says this is Hope.”
Kim’s eyes narrowed. “It is.”
“Not the word hope. The concept. Or the Magick that makes Hope.” For taciturn Dan this was a lot of words when he wasn’t in professor mode. Which this was not. Confidence was the core of professor mode. Dan’s tone suggested he was feeling the opposite of that.
Kim shook her head. “I don’t really get it.”
Dan lifted his brows a hair. “Me neither.”
Abe stepped into the void of confusion. “Think of this.” They reached over and snatched an apple out of the fruit basket near Gwen. Balancing it on their fingertips, they lifted it to eye-level. “This is an apple, right?”
Kim’s tone was slow with hesitance. “Uh, yes.”
“Why?”
“Why is it an apple?”
“Yes.”
“Uh, because it is.”
“Why isn’t it a,” Abe shrugged with their body and their face, “cast iron pan?”
“Because it isn’t.”
“Why?”
Kim darted a glance at Dan. Dan’s shrug didn’t give any insight, so she turned back to Abe. “Because,” she said, real slow, like maybe she wasn’t communicating right at her normal speed. “It isn’t.”
“Why?”
Kim tilted her head, aggravation in the gesture. “Because. It. Isn’t.”
“Because,” Dan interjected, “everyone knows its an apple. So it is.”
Abe pointed at him with the hand not holding the apple. “That.”
“That makes no freaking sense!” Kim said, her exasperation clear in her tone and the stubborn cant of her chin.
“No,” Dan said, real slow, “it makes sense. If you think on it.”
Abe put the apple down on the island, then focused fully on Kim. “Reality is a subjective construction and how we perceive it defines that. Collectively we agree that an apple is an apple and not a cast iron pan and through that agreement we define a thing that is a certain shape within a certain range of colors, that tastes within a limited range, has juice, grows on a tree, has seeds that when harvested can be planted to grow more trees which will produce more of the thing of that shape, color, and taste, and tastes good in a pie as an apple. If we all agreed it was a cast iron pan, then it would, as far as I can tell, be one.”
Kim stared at Abe and blinked rapidly in slow counterpoint to the thoughts ricocheting in her mind. “But science-”
“Says all things are made of atoms. Magick says they are made of Words. Are Words atoms? Are atoms Words? I’m not sure. But I know all things,” they wrinkled their nose, then amended, “except elementals are made of Words.”
“What does that have to do with Dan’s tattoo?”
Abe leaned back against the counter and crossed their ankles, the picture of relaxation counter to the quick intelligence dancing a tarantella in their eyes.
“Somewhere there is the base concept of Apple. That would be with a capital because it is the Word Apple, not just the,” the movement of their right hand, spinning on the air, seemed to spool thoughts around their fingers, “word apple.”
“Because that’s not confusing.”
Abe’s mouth quirked at Kim’s muttered comment. “It is. I get that. Imagine me trying to boil this down to something concrete when for me its kind of like Faith. You know something you believe without being able to really prove it true.”
Dan cocked his head at this, crossed his arms, shifted on his braced legs. “But you have concrete evidence.”
“Do I?” Abe curled their lips down, kind of a facial shrug. “Or am I just perceiving as best I can through the lens of my own experiences? I see Words so I say all things are made up of them. Am I right?”
Dan looked down at his knuckles, thrown into relief by the placement of his fingers over his bicep. “I think you might be.”
Abe’s face broke into a full grin. “Me too.” They shifted their attention back to Kim. “So, somewhere there is the base concept of Apple. Everything people believe about apples, that makes apples real, exist within that single source. Its the concentrated understanding of apples, made concrete through the concentration and basically compression of what everyone knows is true about apples. The same is true for every other thing. Including hope. And I think that,” they indicated Dan’s hand with a wave of their fingers, “is the Word Hope.”
“Why is it on Dan’s hand?”
Dan’s swift head nod suggested he was asking the same thing Kim was.
“Because Words can be damaged. Think about some of the things that have been real,” Abe made a quick air quotes, “that stopped being true.”
“Like?”
“In the 1800s it was believed we had a fish stage in the womb because early human embryos have slits in their necks that look like gills. Since then it has been argued, you could even say believed, that this is wrong. That the cause of this is humans and fish share some DNA. Does that make any more sense that embryos are fish at one point in the womb? Both are kind of weird. But, I suspect that somewhere in the 1800s, if the technology had existed, you could have found an embryo in the womb that was a fish. Because it was believed so and there was no other belief to explain the phenomenon of those slits in the neck.”
Kim rubbed her jaw. “That is some weird ass shit.”
Abe nodded. “Yep. Anyway, for a concept to stay strong it has to be protected. So Words sometimes look for a champion that can protect them. From my experience they find someone who believes in them completely and they form a symbiotic connection to that person who then protects the concept of the Word.”
“I believe in Hope?” Dan’s tone questioned that.
Abe shrugged. “Maybe? Or maybe Hope thinks you do?” They tapered off, their expression going inwards, then focused on Dan. “Those kids? The ones you told me about that are missing?”
“Yes.” It was clear from his expression Dan was waiting for Abe to expand, which they did.
“Are you going to find them.”
“Yes.” There was no hesitation in Dan’s tone.
“No question?”
“No.”
Abe looked at Dan. Dan looked at Abe. Then Abe gave a look of such transcendent joy Kim found her mouth tipping up as if the look was a contagion. And Dan frowned, pursed his lips, then nodded. “Is it that simple?”
“I think, maybe. Yes.” Abe’s head bobbed like it was a balloon on a string, which set their hair to bobbing and sent Kim’s thoughts bobbing as she followed the movement. “Probably? Maybe? Its Magick, which is a lot of Mystery, so even if you spend a very long time thinking about how it all works at the end you are still only perceiving it through your own lens. You could be totally right. You could be totally wrong. Or,” another shrug, “I could be. All this is really about how I put the mystery through the lens of my perception.”
“Unless a bunch of people believe it and then it becomes true?” It was clear Dan was still working the ideas through.
“I’m not sure Magick can ever really be defined. At least not by us. I’m not sure our lens can actually perceive the infinite elements that make it up. It may be a truth outside of our reality. Like the elements. Huh,” they trailed off, “It’s an interesting thought exercise, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Dan’s tone was gruff but there was something of dawning awareness in her expression. “It is.”
Smack. Gwen plopped a dish of filled crepes on the butcher block island, breaking the spell Abe had woven with their words. “Food. Eat.”
Enter The Woods 